Recently, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported that the director and staff of the Naguchi Memorial Institute, had received thank-you letters from a group of Fukushima Prefecture school children they had sent chocolates to, after the super-quake and the terrifying tsunami that followed it.
The Japanese children were clearly delighted with the chocolates from Ghana - which even some of their parents apparently enjoyed eating too: and thought highly of, one gathers.
Apparently, now many of them are even thinking of visiting Ghana someday. And such is the subtle process of how life-long friends are created for nations, dear reader.
Shortly after those two tragedies hit Japan, I wrote a couple of articles suggesting that two plane-loads of Ghanaian chocolate, plus a detachment of soldiers from the 48 Engineers Regiment, ought to be sent to Japan to show our solidarity with a nation and people, who over the years since we gained our independence, have been amongst the most generous of our homeland Ghana's friends.
Alas, as is usual with our unimaginative and clueless political class, it fell on deaf ears - and an opportunity to earn the lasting gratitude of the Japanese people was lost: because the many third-rate people who surround our leaders failed to see it and seize it for Mother Ghana.
The reaction of those Japanese school children, who wrote to thank the staff of the Naguchi Memorial Institute, clearly shows that it would have left an indelible mark on the psyche of the people of Japan, if our current leaders had been as imaginative as the director and staff of the Naguchi Memorial Institute were, in sending made-in-Ghana chocolates to those Japanese children.
After such a gesture, would a few of the biggest Japanese chocolate manufacturers, for example, not have been amenable to a suggestion from the Japanese Crown Prince (prompted by President Mills!) to set up chocolate manufacturing plants in Ghana, to manufacture "own-brand" chocolates for Japanese supermarket chains - to sell as fair-trade chocolate from Ghana: and further enhance their corporate image with Japanese chocolate consumers, that way?
When the perfidious Kufour & Co. were in power, some of us suggested that if they approached Britain's (Ditto EU) supermarket chains, they could either build their own chocolate manufacturing plants here, or help Ghana's Cocoa Processing Company (CPC) to expand and manufacture their "own brand" chocolates, which they could sell in the UK as fair-trade chocolate that helps create sustainable wealth in the democratic African nation-state of Ghana.
The question is: Could the hard-of-hearing masters of the universe who now govern us, not do same too, and by so doing, help add value to our cocoa and create employment for some of our nation's teeming unemployed youth?
And who in this complacent regime, for example, is thinking of helping coastal communities in Ghana, to increase their incomes - by getting the NGO, BRAC, to work with the Rural Enterprises Project (REP) to replicate its successful crab-rearing project for Bangladeshi coastal communities in Ghana?
Could the fishing families along our coast not then be helped to develop markets both locally and in Asia (and elsewhere!) for the giant crabs they are trained to rear by BRAC and the REP?
And if the Mills administration worked closely with the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) and other transport sector unions, could they not get the manufacturers of the Metro Mass Transit Company's (MMTC) Chinese buses to set up repair workshops - in which all those broken down Chinese buses could be repaired and given to young drivers and their "helper mates" on a work-and-pay basis that would eventually turn them into transport owners - whiles making a tidy profit for the MMTC: with precious little risk to its bottom line?
And could the MMTC not end its days as a corporate basket case, by being restructured to operate solely on that work-and-pay basis - selling buses to their drivers for a profit and servicing/repairing them for a fee in their well-managed workshops (in a national chain of workshops joint-venture with the Chinese manufacturers)?
And could a special lottery not also be run on behalf of the State Housing Company (SHC) by the Department of National Lotteries (DNL), the proceeds from which could then be ring-fenced and used to fund a special housing scheme - which those who buy lottery tickets to participate in could be randomly selected, to rent flats at affordable rental rates from a restructured SHC (with the management and workers being given a 20 percent holding in the company, and another 20 percent sold on the Ghana Stock Exchange - withe the state retaining 60 percent of the equity!)?
And what on earth stops the government from approaching Iran, which is keen to deepen its ties with our nation, to provide an interest-free loan with a long grace period to Ghana, to enable the SHC and members of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), to build the 90,000 houses for the security agencies and public servants, nationwide?
By so engaging the present government of Iran, could Ghana not be in a position to act as an honest broker between Iran and the international community (and help find a way to resolve the nuclear impasse perhaps!) as well as help soften its belligerent tone towards our Israeli friends, for example?
So why does the government not move to do so - and follow in Nkrumah's footsteps. Did he not try to bring a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam war - by undertaking to go to Hanoi for that purpose?
And could we not kill two birds with one stone, in providing the small-scale surface gold miners - now busy destroying our natural heritage across Ghana, with such impunity - with the expertise of the staff of the Vertiver Association's nursery at Bunso - who could teach communities affected by mining nationwide, to grow vertiver seedlings, which surface gold miners could then pay them to nurse and plant to "detoxify" soils and underground water: and restore some of the natural environment they pollute to a pristine state, after they exhaust the deposits in their concessions?
I have been unsuccessful in my efforts at getting the Mining Department of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to take up this natural way of removing heavy metals and other pollutants and restoring poisoned soils to good health, with the small-scale mining industry.
Perhaps Dr. Omane Boamah, the deputy minister for environment, science and technology, can redeem himself (for his broken promises to me - to visit Akim Abuakwa Juaso!), by getting the Vertiver Association's president (Dale of BUSAC, no less!) to take this up with the small-scale miners association.
It will be a win-win solution to the menace caused by "galamsey" mining nationwide - that benefits both small-scale miners and local communities in the areas their concessions cover. Oh, if only our hard-of-hearing politicians would listen to good free advice offered without expectation of any reward, for the common good!
Hmmm, Ghana - eyeasem o!
And finally, instead of continuing to tolerate the atrocious spot repairs carried out to fill potholes in urban roads countrywide, and put up with the shoddy work done by road contractors who waste taxpayers' money carrying out feeder road projects nationwide, why don't we simply adapt the Indian initiative, in which villagers are paid to build roads in the areas they live, using appropriate technology, which is light years ahead of (and miles better than!) that presently used here in feeder road projects?
When, oh, when, will members of our political class listen to good free advice (as opposed to jumping to grab that offered by paid consultants - who cost taxpayers the earth - with both hands!), I ask?
If he wants to be re-elected in December 2012, President Mills must now sit up - and take charge of his regime and Ghana, before it becomes way too late for him. Alas, the 2012 presidential election is just round the corner, literally - in case his smug and self-satisfied advisers have forgotten that too: along with the fact that they were in the political wilderness for eight long and painful years. A word to the wise...
Tel (powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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